The DSM-IV has an adult section and a youth section, since the clinical manifestations of mental illness in each is very different. There is no bipolar in the youth section. The doctor should lose his license for failure to apply standard evidence biased diagnosis.

The doctor was granted immunity to testify against the parents, and yet diagnosed all three children with bipolar in less than an hour while placing them on dangerous high doses of psychotropic medication.

Of course doctors seldom get changed, and even less seldom are convicted. So the truly guilty walk free, and we as a society pay the heavy price over and over again.

This is what's called modern medicine and psychiatry? Health Care Reform WHAT? How about stopping the murder of children in the name of medicine and profiteering as a jumping off point.

I am not trying to defend the mother here but she was taking Paxil the whole time this situation was occuring. Paxil, according to the PDR, can cause confusion & amnesia. How was the mother suppose to remember three different meds and the correct time to give the meds. Here is the story in part.

Paragraphs 16 & 17 read: "Last July, DSS representatives met with doctors, neurologists, and other medical professionals treating Rebecca, her siblings, and their mother, Carolyn Riley, now 32, after a therapist who visited their house in Weymouth told the agency Carolyn Riley seemed sluggish and drugged."

"Carolyn Riley later told investigators she takes Paxil for depression and anxiety."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/02/08/dss_dropped_inquiry_before_girl_4_was_found_dead/?page=2

DSS dropped inquiry before girl, 4, was found dead

Got assurances on medications
By Maria Cramer, Globe Staff | February 8, 2007

The state Department of Social Services received a report raising concerns about whether Rebecca Riley was taking too many powerful prescription drugs last summer, but dropped the issue after receiving assurances from her mother and doctors that the treatment was appropriate.

Despite the concerns raised by a therapist, the agency did not seek an independent review of the child's treatment until after the 4-year-old died from an overdose on Dec. 13.

DSS spokeswoman Denise Monteiro said yesterday that the agency sought the second opinion after Rebecca died because it was concerned about her 6-year-old sister and 11-year-old brother, who had received similar diagnoses and medication. DSS immediately took custody of Rebecca's siblings and put them in foster homes.

My niece is two and thinks she is Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. She has the red sparkly shoes, the blue and white dress, and a brown wig to prove it. She gets mad if we call her by her real name. She wears this get up to the store, at home, and even sleeps in it from time to time. All this time I thought it was just two year old behavior. I must inform my sister to please get this child seen by a child shrink at once. She's delusional! Bound to be kiddie bipolar disorder.

"WHAT? How about stopping the murder of children in the name of medicine and profiteering as a jumping off point." (2)

These doctors are truly sick. Someone needs to write a book profiling these people. Who's with me... we can call it: "Psychopaths in Psychiatry"

I saw monsters too when I was two. My dad was the slayer of monsters.... and my teddy protected me. Oh and my Pooh night light!

Isn't this normal?

My question is what exactly constitutes signs of dysfunction in a toddler? Is the doctor arguing that aggression is a sign that the toddler is bipolar? Toddlers are notorious for their meltdowns. I use to work with two year olds, a room full of them, every day. Sometimes they would purposefully hit themselves in the head when they got mad, or throw themselves in the floor, clock another kid in the noggin with a toy, bite each other, etc. They're wildly imaginative. Signs of mental illness? My sister refers to her two year old as her little neanderthal. When the child gets mad her wispy blonde hair is sticking out in all directions, belly hanging over her diaper, stomping her foot and screeching nonsensical stuff. She's like a little cavewoman.

This is heartbreaking. I can't believe there are doctors who are this clueless.

If you present yourself at a psychiatrist's office, you're mentally ill and leave with a diagnosis. If you don't go to a psychiatrist, you don't get diagnosed.

Bipolar disorder is not a disease it's a pejorative term. Still I don't get why the parents and not the psychiatrists are being held responsible for this child's death.

Society instructs parents that seeking psychiatric care is a component of good parenting, though of course it's the opposite, a component of child torture and abuse. Still, it's the doctors and not the parents that killed poor Rebecca.

If that doctor was so innocent, why is she testifying under immunity?

She is a danger to society, I don't care what the parents did-- at one point one must STOP and ask what the hell was this doctor doing rx'ing and dx'ing kids like that, she should never be able to write an rx again EVER.

200mg of Seroquel in Rebecca Riley's med cocktail, that is outrageous, and disturbing, this whole thing is disturbing.

So Rebecca's older sibling was a normal toddler who hears things in the night and has an imagination, like normal kids, and the doctor calls it bipolar.

That diagnosis and the drugs used to treat it, is what killed that little girl, and that doctor decided Rebecca's fate in one hour.

It's a criminal trial, that's for sure, and that woman doctor will walk away with a dead child on her track record, without but a smack on the hand.

I didn't know that Rebecca's mother was on Paxil and the sister...
Okay! Let's assume the mother increased the dosage due to amnesia.

Still 200 mg Seroquel, 750 mg Depakote and 35 mg clonidine is too much!
Dr. Kayoko Kifuji should be answering why she diagnosed a 2 years-old bipolar and why the high dosage.
But doctors are always right and the prescribe according to the patients diagnose blah blah blah...

Give me a break!

This is just freaking RIDICULOUS. When I was a child, I had my own imaginary pokemon and pretended I was an animal and thought monsters were hiding in my walls and that was normal. In less than 10 years this has changed. What, is my wild imagination a symptom of my bipolar? I feel like they are claiming traits and giving them to the illness. They are stealing our personalities and the joy of childhood.

Unbelievable. At what point does this become child abuse? Someone needs to put a stop to the real insanity of unnecessarily prescribing heavy duty medication to young children, babies really. Hello, medical establishment?!

Susan, I saw monsters too. They were under my bed and in the closet. They only came out at night. They quit bothering me once I got a little older. I also hallucinated Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer one Christmas Eve. I don't care if people say it was really an airplane, I know in my heart it was Rudolph.

I was just thinking about this post, and i wondered... Whatever happened to a shot of brandy, or Benadryl, when you want the little kid to calm down and go to sleep? I mean, obviously that's bad if you're getting a little kid drunk all the time, but i'm wondering, if a doctor said, "Oh, just give the little kid a shot of brandy," could they get into trouble for that?

Instead, they just prescribe a hard-core antipsychotic used for treatment-resistant schizophrenia to sedate the child (I'm talking about her sister Rebecca now). That's backward.

I'd place my bets on simple frustration or attention-getting (Kaitllynne); it's possible that she was one of those rare kids that is just unable to control themself, but three of those rarities in one family? Statistically, i don't buy it.

I love reading about Lisa's niece. Little kids are hilarious.

"These doctors are truly sick. Someone needs to write a book profiling these people."
Kimbriel

Wow!
This is a great idea!
We should all write a post about our relationship with psychiatrists.

Some of the phrases I think we will read a lot:
"He/she diagnosed me in 15 minutes."
"When I reported a side effect he/she said that her/his others patients didn't duffer that, that he/she never heard about it and it was all in my head."

"I said that I missed three doses and started feeling strange and reported some of the symptoms. He/she said it was impression because these drugs are not addictive."

"I said I had was tapering the antidepressant and was feeling a lot of strange things such as sweating; muscles spasms; flu-like symptom/ couldn't sleep; my body temperature was either too hot or too cold; I was feeling violent and had even fight at the street and a lot of other strange feelings suicide ideation included.
She/he said that it was not withdrawal but the disease that was returning."

"After being off the drug, it took me 19 months to withdraw, I was feeling very strange and he/she said that I had to go back to the antidepressant because I wasn't a normal human being."

"I told him the first psychiatrist I saw told me I was not depressed and I needed therapy which I did but went to another doctor to help me taper clonazepam and he prescribed me Tofranil that led me to feel extreme anxious and another psychiatrist saw it all as a mental disorder and this was the way I became a psychiatrist patient. He/she said that the first psychiatrist, although very famous and with plenty homages in his memory because he is already dead, did not diagnosed me correctly and I am a bipolar."

Lots of more to report here...

Or "he/she diagnosed me with bipolar while I was on an antidepressant." Now my psychiatrist at the day program I was at made the decision I was bipolar while I was on a teeny 25 mgs zoloft, but apparently all the other docs there had put it on my chart a week before I started the med. She was just 'experimenting'. Thank god I have a good, reliable pdoc now instead of that wench. I'm lucky to have my doc. She informs me of risks and gives me gum and works in tandem with my actual therapist.